We Could Run Out of Hard Drives Soon, Says Analyst
The ongoing shortage of hard disk drive supply is expected to worsen and peak in early 2012, analysts expect.
Gus Richard from Piper Jaffray told Cnet that "we could run out of drives by the end of November."
Caused by the dramatic flooding in Thailand, hard drive prices have already shot up by 10 to 60 percent, but Richard is concerned that PC manufacturers especially are not taking enough precaution to deal with the shortage.
"Nobody seems to be really paying attention. Everyone overreacted to the disaster in Japan. And now I think they're underreacting," he told Cnet. The estimate is that supply will fall about 60 million units short of a demand of 180 million drives and PC manufacturers will not be not able to meet demand with the units they can produce.
However, while Richard believes that shipments could drop by 5 to 10 million units because of the shortage, the supply problem is likely to spill over into Q1 2012 and affect 10 to 20 million units. In Q1, the expected shortage may be between 60 to 80 million units as lack of supply in Q4 is carried over into the new year.
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Douglas Perry was a freelance writer for Tom's Hardware covering semiconductors, storage technology, quantum computing, and processor power delivery. He has authored several books and is currently an editor for The Oregonian/OregonLive.
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darthvidor This would be the start of the death of the spinning HDD's when its price reach SSD-like.Reply -
AbdullahG Well that sucks. Maybe SSDs will drop in price? Nah, they won't. Only time will tell.Reply -
sceen311 I was pissed when the harddrive I bought for $80's dropped to $65... now I'm not so pissed.Reply -
gladiator_mohaa WD Cav Black drives went from 90 for a 1tb to 219! That's way more the a 100 percent!Reply -
alidan if there was a hdd maker not in tailand, they could have laughed all the way to the bankReply
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alidan anyone else kind of hopeing for hdds to go way WAY up in price?Reply
i mean i was thinking of getting 2 2tb drives, and having one back up the other, but if hdds go away completely... i may have to stock up on them and than ebay. -
iam2thecrowe are all hard drives 100% produced in thailand? or only parts of them? Are there any HDD's not made there that are unaffected?Reply